Whoever said that Americans have a love affair with their cars was surely correct. Vehicle owners strive to care for their cars, and with the increasing rise in the purchase price for luxury vehicles in particular, car care and maintenance has become increasingly important to sustain value. While it is important to garage an automobile during periods of non-use to protect it from the elements, modern garages are often cluttered with yard tools, garden implements, bicycles, and so forth, such that the space remaining to park one's car is often limited to an area just larger than the car itself.
As a result, the need to park a vehicle within a certain part of a garage or other structure has become increasingly challenging. In addition, with automatic garage door closers, parking of a vehicle in the wrong place could result in harm to the vehicle. Car owners have therefore devised certain homemade remedies to assist in positioning their car within a garage, including the clever use of a tennis ball or other soft article suspended from a string in the garage, such that when the article touches the windshield of the car as it is pulled in, the driver knows that the car is positioned correctly, at least in terms of forward position. Given that most consumers are also fond of electronic gadgetry, the tennis ball on a string is not a very high-tech solution to the problem. It is also not very visually appealing, and may get in the way when people want to walk around in the garage.
One optically oriented technique associated with the exact positioning of an electrically powered vehicle is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,343,295. According to the teachings of this patent, separate laser sources are mounted on the outside of a vehicle, in the middle of the grill, for example, so as to converge on a target mounted on a charging station. As such, when utilizing the electric vehicle, the operator knows that it is positioned accurately for recharging purposes when the beams converge on a target. While this particular solution does take advantage of an optical approach to the problem, it is not suitable for general purpose garage-type parking, which may not be equipped with an appropriate target, nor are the teachings of the '295 patent extendable to an after-market type product, due to the permanent side-to-side mounting of the emitters. Accordingly, the need still remains for an optically based device which would enable the ordinary consumer to park a typical vehicle within a general structure, such as a residential garage.